Struggling with a tormented past, undergraduate Olivia Winter once led a practical but isolated life. Then she met Professor Dean West, a brilliant scholar of medieval history who melted Liv's inhibitions and taught her the meaning of both love and erotic pleasure. But after three years of a blissful, lusty marriage, Liv and Dean now face a crisis that threatens everything they believe about each other. And when dark secrets and temptations rise to the surface, the fallout might break them apart forever.

Overview from Goodreads

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While most romances today are about some characters’ journey to happy ever after or in some cases, a happy never after, Arouse shows us how a couple tries to maintain their happy ending even when faced with hurdles that could possibly destroy even their marriage.

This story showed how the couple, Dean and Olivia, who started out great, faced different challenges in their union. How several issues could affect or worse, destroy even what people would call a “perfect marriage.”

For three years, Liv and Dean had a blissful married life. But after being frustrated with her career, Liv struggled to find a place for her life, a purpose. Which led her to think of the one thing both of them never considered having before: a baby. But then a secret from the past was unveiled, one problem turned to another, and Dean and Liv were struggling to fight for their marriage to work.

Their reactions were really realistic. Especially Liv’s. I was also amazed by how mature she was despite being younger than Dean for nine years. Dean annoyed me a little because I expected him to more mature since he was older and was supposed to have more wisdom when it came to relationships.

The writing was also suited for the kind of atmosphere the story was having: serious, intense, straight to the heart. The progress of the story was a little slow but it wasn’t that annoying for me.

Arouse was a really heart-felt story because it displayed that for a marriage to work, love was not always enough. Communication and trust were also important and even lies by omission were not good. Even if by doing it would protect your partner. You should not be afraid to bear yourself, all the good and bad, to your partner. You should not be scared that by doing so would lose him/her because you know that you love each other and that should be enough to scare all your fears away.

I’m looking forward on how Liv and Dean’s marriage would progress on the next book.